“Jackson Is a Friend of Life’s Victims.” New York Times, 18 April, 23. Endorsement of Jesse Jackson in the New York Democratic presidential primary. Mailer’s most considered discussion of Jewish-black relations.

“A Conversation with Norman Mailer.” By Barry H. Leeds. Connecticut Review 10 (spring), 1-15. In a revealing interview with the author of the first book-length study of Mailer’s work (The Structured Vision of Norman Mailer, New York University Press, 1969), Mailer discusses a number of topics surrounding the violence of modern life: AIDS, cancer, the Bernard Goetz case, prize-fighting, the police and criminals. Further, he discusses several writers: Mario Puzo, Ernest Hemingway, James Jones, Ken Kesey, Joan Didion and Harry Crews. Mailer also gives his fullest answer to the question of why he abandoned the trilogy of which Ancient Evenings (83.18) was to have been the first volume. Finally, he discusses moviemaking, his own and Clint Eastwood’s. Rpt: 88.6.

“F & F Interview: U.S. Male.” Article-interview by Allan Hunter. Films and Filming, January, 6-7. Mailer says that he hopes his film version of Tough Guys Don’t Dance (84.17) will be seen as a “highly exaggerated statement about life in America, the way that an expressionist painter exaggerates everything.” Mailer also details the background of how the film came to be made, including comment on the film version of The Naked and the Dead, (48.2) and the roles ofTom Luddy and Jean-Luc Godard in the making of Tough Guys.